Project / Completed 2018
Sustainable House Day
“The client, a young professional working in commercial construction was highly knowledgeable and demanded best practice when it came to building comfort and performance. The German Passive House standard was the obvious choice for the home.”
[abbetthaus] is a modern, light and spacious home positioned on a laneway in the costal suburb of Scarborough, WA. The passively designed dwelling was constructed with high performance materials and displays minimalist design consisting of concrete, black detailing and grey timber cladding. [abbetthaus] is the second certified passive house in WA, a design standard that achieves thermal comfort with minimal heating and cooling through the use of insulation, airtightness, window and door design, ventilation systems, etc.
The creative minds behind [abbetthaus] are leanhaus, an architecture practice specialising in passive design, and EVANS, a Perth-based construction company. The brief asked for ‘an innovative and high performance home that also had to be simple and budget conscious’, and although the team was presented with challenges, like extremely constrained site and a two storey high wall on the north boundary, the flawlessly executed design still delivered all this and more.
The courtyard influenced by ‘desert modernist design’ features cactus and succulents to complement the minimalist nature of the home whilst adding a pop of green to contrast the blue reflections of the pool. Although located adjacent to a public laneway, the clever use of the space both inside and out means that the dwelling feels open, yet private.
The subtle façade features IronAsh 105×19 shiplap cladding, made from our PEFC-certified GoodWood Victorian ash with an invisible water-based H3 treatment. Sustainability is important to us at ASH which means that 100% of our Victorian ash is responsibly sourced from regrowth forests, all of which is regrown. Not only that, 100% of every log is used which includes our woodchips and sawdust as green energy to power the site and to provide animal bedding. Learn more about what we do here.
leanhaus
“[abbetthaus] is the second certified Passive house in WA and the first to demonstrate that a home to this standard can be achieved on a modest budget. It is built from one of the most renewable and recyclable building material of all, timber.”
